Noteworthy:1954 Topps #183 Earle Combs

The remarkable debut of Yasiel Puig has brought up comparisons to similar past performances. One of the names that emerged was that of one time Phillies coach Earle Combs 

1954 Topps #183 Earle Combs

When Combs came up in 1925, he had 44 hits in his first 100 ABs.  A feat unmatched until Puig collected four hits versus the Phillies on Sunday.

Comparatives to Earle Combs put Yaseil Puig in pretty good company. Combs who spent his entire career with the New York Yankees went on to win 9 World Championships and a place in the Hall of Fame. Combs specialty was leading off and he did it well batting .325 lifetime with a .397 OBP.

One of my favorite tidbits regarding Combs is that as a member of the 1929 Yankees was one of the first players to wear a permanent uniform number.  The Yankees are considered the first team to make numbers permanent and for regular players they used a pretty simple system to disperse the numbers - your batting order position. Babe Ruth got 3, Lou Gehrig 4.  As the leadoff man Earle Combs got 1 and thus is noted as the first player to wear a number, 

For more in depth info on Earle Combs, check in on the Earle Combs / Baseball Legend website.  It is well done informative and very entertaining.   





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If your interested in sponsoring a Baseball-Ref page you may want to look into Combs.  For $30 you get to tie your sites name to a Hall of Fame Yankee. That is pretty tough to beat.  

References
earlecombs.com
Baseball-Ref.com
Wikipedia.org
espn.com 

Phungo Roman Numeral Challenge Wrap Up

Phenomenal Superbowl. Anytime the underdog puts up a fight and your not rooting for the favorite it's a good game for me. Drew Brees was just about perfect - The Saints D came up big when it had to and the Colts made just a few mistakes and that was the difference.

OK recapping results of the The Challenge - There were a total of 9 cards posted 7 of which were solved:

Jimmie Foxx - nickname "Double X" or XX = 20 - Play at the Plate
David Eckstein - nickname "X" = 10 - Padrographs

Jimmy Rollins - Uniform Number 11 looks like II = 2 - PatSearcher
Chase Utley - From Upper Deck X = 10 - PlayAt the Plate(2)

Mike Ivie - Last Name is "IV" = 4 - PatSearcher(2)
Kaz Ishii - Last Name has 3 Is or III = 3 - The Phillies Room

YSL Thurmun Munson - by Rod over at Padrographs (2)

Rod got it for a different reason then I intended. The clue for this one was Baseball-Reference which refers to the Yankee Stadium that the YSL set celebrates as Yankee Stadium II - so that is how I arrived at the 2.



That Leaves Nolan Ryan and Earle Combs. In Hindsight Combs was likely a poor choice.

So here are your clues for these two. I will give you till Noon tomorrow.

The Ryan Answer has something to do with Family Feud and a Career record he holds.

The Combs Answer has historical signficance - Earle is believed to have been involved in a historic baseball first.

Phungo Roman Numeral Challenge II

If you would like more background on this Phungo Challenge click here.

Time for the 2nd Quarter. We have an All Phils 2nd Quarter with three cards. Each Card below represents a different roman number, your goal is to figure out what the number is. The top two are pretty hard, the last one should be a little easier.